Niiwam

Clarence Thomas Delgado, an assistant director for Senegalese author and filmmaker Ousmane Sembene (Moolaadé), made his solo debut with this rough-hewn 1992 parable based on Sembene's novella. A poor husband and wife travel from their rural village to sprawling Dakar, seeking treatment for their sick baby; after the child dies the father has no recourse but to carry its bundled corpse with him on a long bus ride to the cemetery. At each stop a colorful passenger boards, embodying a particular trait (rudeness, indifference, cruelty, vanity), and the journey becomes a pointed assessment of the Senegalese nation. In French and Wolof with subtitles. 70 min.
ByAndrea Gronvall